Business reputation is key to keeping your company afloat or letting it sink. It’s why many large businesses pump huge amounts into marketing and PR teams every year to help maintain a respectable image.
Certain claims can tarnish a business’s credibility in the long run and efforts to prevent this from happening shouldn’t be undermined and should be taken seriously as part of your risk management strategy. Damaging allegations can be key to altering how the public views a business, therefore resulting in them boycotting it and looking elsewhere for the same goods or services. This inevitably reduces the opportunity to increase revenue and seek investment.
Why does reputation matter for businesses and which allegations can damage it?
How others see the business, how the business communicates itself and who the business really is all comes into play. Poor customer service can give businesses a poor reputation, however some allegations can be even more damaging.
Examples of allegations that could permanently damage your business include:
- Fraud
- Sexual harassment
- Discriminatory practices
- Environmental harm
- Misuse of customer data
- Unethical advertising
If your business becomes tarnished with a particular offence, this could discredit your business if you decide to take it in a different direction. For example, if your company has been associated with poor environmental practices, this can stop it from joining in with particular marketing trends or angles. For example, when fast fashion companies try to involve themselves in environmental discussions, this routinely backfires with protestors and people online calling them out.
Similarly, if there are discussions around mental health week or awareness days such as International Women’s Day, this restricts the creditability a business can have in these areas due to existing allegations.
What strategies can limit and protect your businesses from reputation damage?
Legal consultancy can be useful to help a company stay on top of its reputation, with advice on how to practice more ethically and in line with regulations. As well as this, if you have measures in place to help prevent the listed allegations, you can explain that these were in place and go into detail about how you will prevent anything like it from happening again in the future.
Other control processes, whether that’s through standardisation or policies, can help to keep a business and its employees in check – both at the top and bottom. Consistency is everything, and being able to maintain a high standard across the company will mean it’s less likely to fall into a PR disaster involving one of the above allegations.
Similarly, maintaining the values you’ve put in place means taking accountability for anything that does happen and taking the appropriate action. If someone within the business is responsible for something that compromises its reputation, it’s important to issue the correct penalty.
